Breaking the Thirty Year Deadlock:
Essay 1 - Why Have We Been Unable to Solve the Sustainability Problem?

August 2006

Why Have We Been Unable to Solve the Sustainability Problem?

Al Gore giving his slide show in An Inconvenient
Truth, 2006.
The movie focused on the top sustainability problem
of them all: climate change. Behind Al is
a model showing how the Gulf Stream flows, and how
it will probably stop, as it did the last time in a
similar situation, if the Greenland ice cap melts. The model covers
the entire globe, which was rotating slowly. The Pacific
Ocean side is shown. The Gulf Stream is part of a global
current called the Great
Ocean Conveyor Belt.

The movie is
typical of the present approach to solving the sustainability
problem. It attempts to win one mind at a time by telling
the world the truth about the problem. But as decades
of trying this approach have shown, it wins a few minds,
but not nearly enough. There must be a better way.

It is certainly not for lack of trying. Nor is it for lack of brilliance.
The environmental movement has attracted many of the sharpest
minds on the planet, who have worked tirelessly for decades
to solve the problem. They have educated the public about the
magnitude and urgency of the problem, and what can be done to live more
sustainably. They have lobbied and cajoled politician after
politician. They have organized. And they have found countless
new ways that environmental degradation can be reduced.

But none of this has worked.

As a result the question is no longer haunting just environmentalists.
It is now lingering in the minds of concerned citizens all
over the world. As each of them thinks about what they can
do to help solve the most important problem in the world, the
question repeats itself again and again: Why have we been unable
to solve the sustainability problem? Why don't our leaders take
action before it is too late?

Five years of work at Thwink.org on that question has led to a simple
answer: The process does not fit the problem. It appears
that without realizing it, environmentalists have been trying
to drive a square peg into a round hole. It will not work.

The peg is the process being used to solve the problem. The hole is the
problem. If they do not fit, then no amount of heroic effort,
even by the brightest brains on the planet, will make them
fit. To continue to try is an exercise in infinite futility.

Classic Activism Will Not Work

Our analysis shows that the reason the process does not fit the problem
is that presently the environmental movement uses what can
be called Classic Activism.
This is a simple, easily learned process based on these four
steps:

1. Identify
the problem to be solved.

2. Find
the proper practices, if they are not yet known.

3. Tell
the people the truth about the problem and the proper practices.

4. If
that fails, exhort and inspire the people to support the proper
practices.

Examples of the proper practices needed to solve the sustainability problem
are use of renewable energy, the three R's of reduce, reuse, and recycle,
and closed loop manufacturing, which emits no net wastes and consumes no
net non-renewable resources.

Classic Activism is the use of these four steps to solve all types of
activist problems, by winning over one mind at a time with
the truth. The reason that Classic Activism is so appealing
is that it works. Sometimes.

It worked on the women's suffrage movement. It worked on civil rights.
It worked on getting smoking banned in public places, and warning
labels put on cigarette packages. In the environmental arena,
it worked on the pesticide problem as the result of Silent Spring.
It worked on greatly reducing city smog, making our drinking
water safer, and cleaning up innumerable toxic waste sites.

And lo and behold, it worked on a global problem: the ozone layer depletion
problem. This was the first serious international environmental
problem to ever be solved. Suddenly there was hope. If we
can solve one global problem, then why not the rest?

But this hope has been dashed on the rocks. Looming ahead are
problems so huge that any of them will lead to global catastrophe
if they remain unsolved. These problems include climate change,
deforestation, soil
deterioration, chemical pollution, freshwater depletion and pollution,
abnormally high rates of species extinction, and natural
resource depletion. These problems are all growing worse at
exponential rates. None have a solution in sight.

The reason these problems remain unsolved is Classic
Activism works only on easy problems. It fails on
difficult problems because
it cannot handle the phenomenon of change resistance, which
occurs when the system resists change, no matter how hard you
try. It is not the technical side of an environmental degradation
problem that makes it difficult. We already have many viable
technical solutions that will take us most of the way to sustainability.
What makes a particular problem easy or difficult tends to
be the amount of change resistance in it, or the social
side of the problem. For example, local pollution problems tend
to have low change resistance, while global ones have high resistance.
As a result, we have solved a much higher percentage of local
problems.

Classic Activism can handle mild change resistance with
step 4. But it has no step whatsoever for handling strong
change resistance. It also cannot handle problems that are
so complex they require deep analysis to even begin to see
a way forward, because Classic Activism has no analysis step.
Thus, as soon as the sustainability problem morphs into one with more unsolved
difficult problems that you can count, as it has in the last
few years, classic activists are totally stuck. They have no
way forward. They are as helpless as a carpenter without the
tools he needs to get the job done.

The Only Way to Solve a Radically New Problem
Is a
Radically New Approach

It's a bold claim. But it's justified.

The process must fit the problem. The sustainability
problem is an entirely new type of problem. It is not the same
as the ones civilization has faced before. Therefore it cannot
be solved by old ways of thinking, such as Classic Activism and brute force.
Truly new problems do not yield to old solutions. Nor do they yield
to old lines of attack. As Einstein long ago observed:

"The
significant problems we face [today] cannot be solved at the
same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Until activists acknowledge this undeniable
new truth, they will be as unable to solve the sustainability
problem as alchemists were able to turn lead into gold.

Once activists are ready to move forward to a new level of thinking, they
will make the same discovery that all of science made centuries
ago:

There Is a Better Way

The great strength of the Scientific Method is once you
start using it, you have installed a positive feedback
loop on yourself and your organization. Over time this
amplifies problem solving effort by several orders
of magnitude. This occurs because the Scientific
Method is the only known method
for producing reliable new knowledge.

The Scientific Method consists of these five steps, which every serious analytical
activist should memorize:

1. Observe a phenomenon that has no good explanation.

2. Formulate a hypothesis.

3. Design an experiment to test the hypothesis.

4. Perform the experiment.

5. Accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis.

In the 17th century science reinvented itself by discovery of a better
way. It was not just a little better. It was radically
better by several orders of magnitude. The new way was the Scientific
Method. Science now had something it never had before: a way
to create reliable new knowledge. The key was experimental
proof. Now, at last, one body of knowledge
could build on another and not collapse. It was now possible
to build towers of knowledge that soared to such heights that
science, and civilization, made advances that had previously
seemed impossible. And it made them so fast that history witnessed
one bold revolution after another: the Scientific Revolution,
then the Industrial Revolution, and finally the Information
Revolution.

Next will be the Sustainability Revolution. But this will come to
pass only if environmentalists say goodbye to Classic Activism,
and adopt a problem solving process that fits the problem.

Until this is done, environmentalists have no lever. Without
the right lever they have no leverage. Archimedes said "Give
me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I can move
the world" for a reason. The right lever can move anything.
In Archimedes' case he demonstrated that using the leverage
obtained from a block and tackle (a multiple pulley system)
he could move an entire ship with a single hand. In the case
of science the right lever was the Scientific Method. Once
they gave themselves the right lever, scientists were able
to move all of civilization forward at a speed undreamed of
by those who came before them.

The same could happen for environmentalists.

If you are sincerely interested in how to do this, then Thwink.org has
much to offer you and your organization. But please be forewarned.
The way forward is unconventional. It requires an open mind
and the ability to ignore the criticisms of your fellow classic
activists, as you proceed down a new path and they stay behind.

The place to start is to realize that if science can reinvent itself then
so can environmentalism. All it takes is the right new foundation,
which is:

Analytical Activism

Analytical Activism is the use of the Analytical
Method to achieve activist goals. The Analytical Method is an
analytical approach derived from the most successful problem
solving process of all time: the Scientific Method. The Analytical
Method can handle problems of any kind, no matter how difficult
they may be, because the method is self-improving. It can
evolve as needed to solve any problem.

Very briefly, the nine steps of the Analytical Method are:

1. Identify the problem to solve.

2. Choose an appropriate process.

3. Use the process to hypothesize analysis or solution elements.

4. Design an experiment(s) to test the hypothesis.

5. Perform the experiment(s).

6. Accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis.

7. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5, and 6 until the hypothesis is accepted.

8. Implement the solution.

9. Continuously improve the process as opportunities arise.

Compare this to the four steps of Classic Activism, which are:

1. Identify the problem to be solved.

2. Find the proper practices, if they are not yet known.

3. Tell the people the truth about the problem and the proper practices.

4. If that fails, exhort and inspire the people to support the proper practices.

Now compare Classic Activism to the main steps of Alchemy, which were:

1. Identify the problem to be solved.

2. Try one solution after another until you find something interesting.

3. Tell your fellow alchemists the truth about your discovery.

4. If they don't adopt it, then exhort and inspire them until they
do.

There is more than a passing resemblance between Alchemy and Classic Activism.
Why is this? Because both are based on guesswork,
brute force, and endless attempts to convert others to
your way of thinking. Is it any wonder that both of these processes
achieved less than spectacular results?

Now compare them to the Analytical Method. Notice step 2, choose an appropriate
process. This says that after you have correctly identified
the problem, the most important thing to do next is to choose
a process that fits the problem. Does Classic Activism or Alchemy
have anything close to that step? No. Instead, they assume
that one size fits all, that their same four steps will solve
all problems of any kind, no matter what. This of course is
a grand illusion, one worthy of a run in Las Vegas as the centerpiece
of a magician's act.

But the Analytical Method has more to offer than that. Examine steps 3
to 7. This is the Scientific Method in a nutshell. Packed into
the Analytical Method is the most potent problem solving process
of them all. Again, does Classic Activism or Alchemy have anything
close to this? No. But they don't know that, and so they blissfully
behave as if they do. Classic activists all over the world
have blindly assumed they know how to solve the sustainability
problem, and that their solution will work. They have thousands
of solutions, and promote all of them with the zeal of
a preacher with nine aces. When their proposed solutions fail,
as almost all of them have, do they see that as proof that
their hypotheses were wrong? No. Instead they resolutely go
back to Classic Activism's steps 2, 3, or 4 and try them again,
only this time a little harder and somehow "better." But this
will not work. No amount of effort will turn a false hypothesis
into a true one.

The Alliance for Climate Protection

But classic activists continue to try again and again to make Classic
Activism work anyhow. For example, the Alliance
for Climate Protection is a new organization formed by Al Gore to capitalize
on the momentum of the movie An Inconvenient Truth. The Alliance's
key strategy is:

"The problem is not that we lack evidence or the economic
and technical capacity to solve the problem, but that we
lack the collective will to act. We
must catalyze and fuel a national conversation about taking
action, among a diverse
set of constituencies and interests, to create the political
imperative that is needed.

"Conditions are ripening to push this issue over the
top and new voices are joining the call for action. This
is a critical time to seize the momentum and forge a common
commitment to meet the challenge this threat demands." - Source (August
11, 2006)

The Gulf Stream has already slowed down by 30% from
1957 to 2004. "Climate models suggest that if the Atlantic
Conveyor shut down, temperatures in northwest Europe could
drop by 4 to 6 degrees Celsius, or about 10 degrees Fahrenheit,
in 20 years." Source

I have the greatest admiration for Al Gore's work. But let's be honest.
This is Classic Activism. The phrase "we must" is an attempt
to exhort and inspire. So is "conditions are ripening" and
"This is a critical time." In fact, both paragraphs are no
more than yet another way of saying that we must solve the
problem or else. Is this anything new? Will it solve the problem?
No. Even if some action is taken soon, it will probably be
small token amounts, just enough so that the politicians involved
don't lose votes because of this issue. But what is needed
is a massive system reaction, one so aggressive that it solves
the sustainability problem before certain critical
thresholds are passed, such as ice cap melting and stoppage
of the Gulf Stream.

Examine the Alliance for Climate Protection's strategy closely. Where
is the evidence they have chosen a process that fits the problem?
Where is the application of the Scientific Method to their
hypothesis that this strategy will solve the problem? And where
is the continuous improvement of their process, so that they
can learn from mistakes and successes, and get better and better
until their approach is good enough to solve the problem? In
all cases, they are nowhere to be found.

The World Commission on Environment and Development

Also known as the Brundtland Report, this is the book
that defined sustainable development as development
that "meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs." However, there is a
slight problem with sustainable development. Given today's
technologies and the levels of their implementation, it
is impossible.

The Alliance for Climate Protection is not the only environmental organization
to make mistakes like these. Thousands more have done the
same over the years. For example, in 1987 the United Nations
World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common
Future,
a 400 page book on what to do about the environmental sustainability
problem. The back cover
gives an overview of the solution:

"Our Common Future serves notice that the time has come
for a marriage of economy and ecology, so that governments
and their people can take responsibility not just for environmental
damage, but for the policies that cause the damage. Some
of the policies threaten the very survival of the human race.
They can be changed. But we must act now."

This is little more than the fourth step of Classic Activism, exhort
and inspire the people to support the proper practices. But
is it possible that buried inside the book is what we need?
Sadly, no. There is no evidence of a formal analytical process
to solve the overall problem. Instead, there is plenty of accumulation
of data about the symptoms and immediate causes, and reviews
of what has worked and what has not. There is also no evidence
of the use of the Scientific Method to prove all key hypotheses.
For example, the report makes this astounding claim on page
xii:

"What is needed now is an era of economic growth—growth
that is forceful and at the same time socially and environmentally
sustainable."

However,
using present practices, any economic growth only makes the
problem worse. Thus only economic growth using sustainable
practices will work. But no nation
on earth is even close to using sustainable practices. Instead,
they continue to use unsustainable ones. Thus the above claim
calls for system behavior which is impossible. In other words,
it is a false hypothesis.

Presently there is no such thing as economic
growth that is sustainable. Therefore "sustainable
development" is a catastrophic oxymoron. However,
the (false) promise that sustainable development is possible
is so alluring that the phrase has become official policy in
most of the world. What the Brundtland Report really did was
to make the sustainability problem worse, not better, by calling
for
"an era of economic growth" that is not sustainable.

The report's solution is to call for various "institutional and legal
changes." Most are so vague as to be worthless, such as "A
nation's foreign policy needs to reflect the fact that its
policies have a growing impact on the environmental resource
base of other nations and the commons," on page 314. On the
same page the report outlines six areas "needed to make the
transition to sustainability." But there is no evidence these
will solve the complete problem. They are presented as
being intuitively correct, rather than as the result of a long
careful analysis, backed up by proof they will work. The six
areas are
"getting at the sources, dealing with the effects, assessing
global risks, making informed choices, providing the legal
means, and investing in our future."

However, none of these policies will be adopted until the change
resistance part of the problem is solved. Why is it
that society doesn't want to adopt sustainable practices?
Why do politicians fail to pass the legislation needed to
implement recommendations like these?

Furthermore, why is
society taking such awkward command and control approaches
to the proper coupling part
of the problem? Presently the economic system is improperly
coupled to the greater system it lives within: the environment.
Once change resistance is overcome, only
the most efficient coupling between the two systems will work
in time to avoid environmental catastrophe.

Why aren't organizations like The World Commission on Environment
and Development focusing on change resistance and ultra-high
efficient proper coupling? The report is silent on this, because
conceptions like these are not in the four steps of Classic
Activism.

There Is a Better Lever

But they are in the nine steps of Analytical Activism. And so are the
steps that require proof of all key hypotheses. And so is the step
that continuously improves the process until it is good enough
to solve the problem.

It was Archimedes who said "Give me a lever long enough, and a place
to stand, and I can move the earth." We agree. The fundamental
thesis of Thwink.org is that environmentalists are unable
to move the earth into a sustainable mode because they are pushing on
low leverage points, due to reliance on an intuitive problem solving
process instead of an analytical one. The environmental movement has
the right place to stand, but without the right process it has no lever.

Where is the environmentalist who is willing to break
from the peer pressure imposed by his fellow classic activists, and stand up and
say:

"It was Einstein who defined insanity as 'doing
the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' I refuse
to do that anymore. Give me the right lever!"

Where is the environmental organization who hears
that call, and has the
courage to go against conventional wisdom, transform itself,
and give environmentalists the right lever?

We invite you to explore how to do this at Thwink.org. The Analytical
Method has been applied, and there are a number of fine new
jewels awaiting your discovery.

The
insight here is that if we take the 30,000 foot view of the
history of environmentalism, what we see is that the process
of Classic Activism has dominated problem solving approaches.
But on difficult problems, Classic Activism is no more productive
for environmentalists than Alchemy was for scientists.

All that changed when science
woke up and adopted a process that fit the problem: the Scientific
Method. With that better lever they changed the world.

Image Credits - Al Gore giving his slide show is from here.
The Scientific Method diagram is from here.
The small image of the Gulf Stream currents and data is from
here.
The cover of Our Common Future is from here.
The main photo on the introduction page was taken on October
3, 2002 from the near the top of Dent Parrachee, an 11,000
foot peak in the largest glacier in France. The original photo,
sized down to 1024 x 768, is here.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.